Modes of discourse of EFL learners have long been the concern of many studies in the field of applied linguistics. As an extension to such studies, the present research aimed to examine the two most frequently encountered modes in a large number of educational, institutional, and personal contexts: narration and exposition. Based on a language proficiency test, and comparison of the students’ writings in the pilot study, out of 80 senior EFL learners, 30 were chosen and defined as more proficient and advanced learners. Two narrative expository texts were given to the participants to read and recall in two summary writing tasks. Their retrospective written protocol were analytically rated using the scale adopted by Engelhard et al. (1992). This scale consists of five domains: content and organization, style, sentence formation, usage, and mechanics. The results, both quantitative and qualitative, indicated that subjects showed more cognitive burden in recalling the expository mode than the narrative mode. Domains of these two modes, however, were not the same. A detailed description of the domains and the components (features of the text) used to define these domains is also discussed.

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